As of July 1, 2010, PNAS will no longer allow the submission of papers “Communicated” to the journal by NAS members and will instead handle these papers as Direct Submissions. Authors are free to ask an NAS member to edit their paper as a “Prearranged Editor” prior to submission to PNAS. Assignments are handled by the Editorial Board, and members who agree in principle to edit a paper are given special consideration by the board. NAS member contributions are not affected by this policy change.

PNAS has a nearly 100-year history of scientific publishing that is governed by principles established by George Ellery Hale in 1914, which include publication of work by a nonmember that appears to an NAS member to be of particular importance. Until 1995, the majority of papers published in PNAS were authored by nonmembers whose work was “Communicated” by an NAS member who believed the work to be of sufficient significance to warrant publication in the Academy's journal. Many such papers were landmarks in their field, such as …

Bacteria could help tackle the growing mountains of e-waste that plague the planet. Although researchers are a long way from optimizing the approach, some are already confident enough to pursue commercial ventures.

Holographic acoustic tweezers, in which ultrasonic waves produced by arrays of sound emitters are used to individually manipulate up to 25 millimeter-sized particles in three dimensions, could be used to create 3D displays consisting of levitating physical voxels.